The money doesn't go to the start ups - it all goes to large tech companies like IBM, etc, because, obviously, IBM knows about innovation.
The cover is that the government doesn't know tech so it will give money to trusted partners and they will choose who to give the money to because they've been doing such a great job innovating in Canada. Surprise: they gave the money to themselves!
You might have wondered why all these incubators in the crypto era were desperate to get you to go to their office. You might have also wondered: what fool is paying for this nice office in downtown Toronto where the prices are crazy-high? The taxpayer.
All of that money was completely wasted and worse, little of it went to actual start ups.
The company has a project manager with a large spreadsheet to keep track of everything so that no employee would accidentally be officially double booked because that could be detected as fraud.
Some real work was done, but the meetings with other partners were a farce. You had these tiny companies whose only existence was to feed off the European money.
One day our manager asked if the architecture document of a 100kbps modem that I had worked on could be repurposed for a 1 Mbps modem project that was European funded…
However, things are changing... As of this current government, nobody is scheming anymore. The corruption and wealth extraction happens openly. They are really testing the waters in what they can get away with. It's almost US level audacity, tho not yet as undignified. The sad part is, although people here are universally frustrated about it, they flock to the one party evidently more corrupt and incompetent than the CDU: The AfD.
Honestly, despite political disagreement, all my life I considered myself lucky to live here, but for the first time it makes me sick thinking about Germany's future, working here and paying taxes. And the base motives showing as reactionary malice by my fellow citizens disgust me. It's shameful to admit, but this country is truly ill and deeply corrupt.
In local forums, so often you see (paraphrasing a pattern) "why are the government interfering with landlords, they should stop so many barbers opening instead". That is, why are the gov interfering in property markets, instead they should interfere in property markets AND plan the economy (where economy here means 'financial system').
The people promoting planned economy without realising it are always 'right wing' 'all Communists should be shot'-types. It's fascinating.
I think a better way to look at it is people demanding the government to intervene whenever intervention is beneficial to them personally, while demanding the government leave things alone whenever intervention is detrimental to them personally. Which is just a long winded way to describe the basics of democracy - people voting in their own interest.
They have 3 tiers. Its called 新基建 - *Xīn Jījiàn
Top tier is for essentials like food, electricity, internet/comms, water, sewer. Heavily controlled, usually state owned companies.
Middle tier is stuff that's integrated into essential tier.
Lower tier is forefront of tech, and not at all critical for life.
And a reminder that even fucks like Nestle said that water is not a human right. But every capitalist would do their damndest to put a sale price on anything they could. They'd charge breathing if possible.
I feel like these discussions always devolve from "a government is doing a thing badly" → "governments always do things badly" → "governments should stop doing things". But governments are basically the only party that can act in the best interest of citizens rather than shareholders.
So, I would much prefer "a government is doing a thing badly" → "here are ways we could fix it". This should be perfectly achievable. Of course, no bureaucracy—public or private—will ever be perfectly efficient. That doesn't mean it can't be better, or produce a net good.
Also, I do think people tend to miss all the successful things governments fund, like science research.
Founders that hasn't gone public yet and sold out are the only ones. The government has already sold out to shareholders, at least in USA.
And no its not just "hire good people", its not just "raise wages". What happens if you raise wages is that the useless people get more money, since the ones who decide who to hire are still bad at hiring, so them raising wages without hiring better people is also a form of corruption.
In the end you need to do a deep cleanse to fix it, there are no easy fixes. Root out all plants from all interest groups, everyone that has been bribed via lobbyism money etc, in the entire government...
The best interest of shareholders can at least be defined, because it's narrow in scope. What is in the best interests of citizens, especially in diverse countries where there is not a lot of things with overwhelmingly broad agreement?
> people tend to miss all the successful things governments fund, like science research
People also tend to miss opportunity cost in government funding (where else could that money have gone, with greater positive outcomes?) as well as alternative sources of funding (could research have been funded privately, especially with lesser tax burden?).
Well, I don't think government does ALL things badly, so this is clearly not the case. But the NGO fraud loop is now extremely well established. The thing is none of these programs existed until pretty recently. And before this time in history, we had two mostly co-existent parties in power. Now it seems like specific people will do or allow fraud all the way to the top. We also have bills like "AB 2624" that will make it harder to even find fraud. If our government is behaving this way, I find it best to cut it off from even being allowed to do it.
Go back to roads, police and safety, not funding for alphabet causes.
We already do. They're called grants committees and similar, and have been around for decades. They're slow, bureaucratic, and self-defeating since it's so much work and so little chance of winning a grant that everyone submits massively over-valued bids in order to make it worthwhile. However they do put a lot of effort into (trying to) make sure that only legit funding allocations are made.
And the big accounting firms.
It's incredible how efficiently they divert all activity and attention from the core task, and then wonder why things don't take off.
Public-private partnerships are a breeding ground for corruption. The government either needs to own what it owns or completely give up and leave it to a well regulated private market.
That's not to say one off contacts need to be eliminated. But when it comes to things like building and maintain roads, these private contacts end up being huge sinkholes for public funds.
A big problem in the Anglosphere in particular is that the government is too focused on politics and catering to internal stakeholders and not enough on measurable results.
https://thecollectivehk.com/%e7%a7%91%e6%8a%80%e5%88%b8%e8%a...
First and last time I ran into something so blatant. We didn't fall for it btw.
You know, just something that could provide a little leg up to every small business until they’re not small anymore. But no, inflation doesn’t exist!
I'd be very interested in reading about this fraud.
Now wouldn't it be interesting to dive into how old the extortion tactic of creating the problem you solve goes?
